ifying that precious flotsam of this kind has remained four
or five years in a land of wood-scarcity without being disturbed.

_(c) No one must eat seal and walrus on the same day_. Thus a check is
given to luxuriousness and the Eskimo is self-prevented from falling
into the fate which overtook Rome.

_(d) All large animals killed are to be looked upon as common property
of the tribe and not as a personal belonging of the man who kills them_.
Thus here, under the Northern Lights, do the Farthest North subjects of
the Seventh Edward work out in deeds the dream of Sir Thomas More's
crescent-isle of Utopia where men lived and worked as brothers, holding
all things in common.

The Eskimo realises that the pleasure of life is in pursuit, not in
acquisition. Where wants are many, joys are few; the very austerity of
his life has made a man of him. Laying up few treasures for the elements
to corrupt, accumulating no property except a little, a very little, of
the kind designated by Wemmick as "portable," he, to better and saner
effect than any man, decreases the denominator of his wants instead of
increasing the numerator of his havings. Surrounded by the palcocrystic
ice, the genial current of his soul has not been frozen by that ice. An
Eskimo family accepts life with a smile and, in the faith of little
children, goes on its way.

An old Scot once prayed, "O Lord, send down to Thy worshippin' people at
this time the savin' grace o' _continuance_." Only one man has less need
to pray that prayer than the Scot himself, and that man is the Eskimo.
The Indian eats and sleeps as his wife works, but while there is
spear-head to fashion or net to mend, the clever hands of the Eskimo are
never idle. Thrifty as a Scot, ingenious as a Yankee, every bit of the
little property that he has is well kept. You find around this igloo no
broken sled-runner, untrustworthy fishing-gear, nor worn-out
dog-harness. Civilisation has nothing to teach this man concerning
clothing, house-building, or Arctic travel. Indeed, one may hazard the
opinion that the ambitious explorer from the outside, if he reach the
Pole at all, will reach it along Eskimo avenues with this man as active
ally and by adopting his methods of coping with Northern conditions.

On account of the malignity of nature, it is rare that an Eskimo
attains the three score and ten Scriptural years. Few, indeed, live
beyond the age of fifty-five or sixty. If his life is short, it is
ha